From reading what my classmates have posted on the topic or Remediation, I have a much broader idea of what that process entails and how it affects us in our day-to-day lives. Tim’s insights on how this process could be applied to our own projects coincided with what I drew from the article and how I applied it to our projects..but his were a bit more technical than mine, as he’s much more savvy like that. Delphine’s insights on how remediation affects even religion was really astounding. I hadn’t thought of it like that until she mentioned it in her post, but once I thought about it, I realized that she was right…so much religious history and even mythology is remastered and reimagined time and time again through films and books…and each derivation is slightly different from the one before it. Lastly, Megan’s insights were highly invaluable to rationalizing the reality of the concepts the article talks about, both through our projects and through our everyday lives.

Remediation as far as digital devices are concerned, as I understand it, is simply reconfiguring the media that is currently at our fingertips in such a way that it is, at the same time, different than what it was before the reconfiguration and yet the same as before. When I think of this, I think of Myspace and Facebook. Both are built on the same principles and yet they’re completely different from one another. Twitter and Facebook…basically any social media website. I wonder if this is also how new video game consoles are constructed, like the Playstation and the Playstation 2. The PS2 is a console that allows players to load Playstation 2 games as well as the older games they enjoyed on the Playstation 1 on the same console. Following that strand, I think the Wii does the same with the ability to purchase games from older systems from their online store and play them as software on the Wii console.

As far as Project 1 is concerned, I think that using another medium to compile and present the information required for the project’s completion would have been much simpler. It would also have changed the way in which readers received and perceived the information I provided in the project. I would be able to “remediate” the glog into probably a DeviantArt blog (since they are heavy on the inclusion of art into posts) and still be able to efficiently present the project in such a way that it would be informative and easy for viewers to understand. For Project 2, the same could apply…we could have chosen WordPress (we actually did consider using that at one point) or another website-hosting domain that could be free to the public (does one such website exist?) as our website location, but it would have had a different feel to it than the Google Sites presentation does. Part of me thinks that it wouldn’t be as clean, but another part of me says that we wouldn’t have had as much trouble with embedding videos and code as we did in the Google Sites application.

Project 3 is basically a remediation of ourselves. We are compiling every part of ourselves that we have projected online and in the tangible world to present to potential employers an image of who we are. I think that makes Project 3 sound a lot more fun than it actually might be (writing resumes is necessary, but it’s not the most fun task in the world).

Based on the sources and video, I think it’s absolutely crucial to manage one’s online identities because it’s so easy for anyone to search you and the information you post online, so I wouldn’t want what I post to hinder my ability to secure a good job. It’s always said that you should not mix business with pleasure, so I think that holds true online. It’s essential to keep your social identity separate from your business identity with little to no interaction between the two. A social identity can be more fun and carefree, but the professional identity must maintain a sense of dignity and decorum, otherwise, you might accidentally embarrass your employers and make them mad and put your job in jeopardy. And we don’t want that, do we?

You have to consider who you are first and foremost before constructing either of these identities because there are just some things about your personality that you can’t easily cover up and remain happy with the image you’re projecting. You also have to take into consideration who you either want to or are currently working for before constructing either identity. If you work for a law firm, you don’t want to go on Facebook the night before a big trial and say how “plastered” you are because you’re so sure you’re going to win the case. That’s just stupid. But, on the other hand, if your workplace is more laid-back, then it’s okay to be comical and sociable, but still maintain a sense of dignity.

When I was younger, there was only one font for me: Comic. Sans. I used that font for everything because I thought that it was the coolest font in the entire world. Having grown up and acquired my “adult taste buds,” I have come to realize that Comic Sans is not a good font in any capacity. Personally, I tend to like the script typefaces. I will use at least one on every poster/flyer that I have to create for Relay or when I was an RA. I like the cursive look on some texts…others can’t pull it off so much.

Professionally, I tend to use Times New Roman for every paper/report that I have to turn in, but that’s only because it’s the only font I’ve ever been told to use for them. I love the look of the Bookman font, though, because it doesn’t seem as tightly packed as Times, even though there is little space in between the characters.

The fonts I chose to represent me personally and professionally are different because of the fact that the script fonts don’t look very professional anywhere other than a poster. While a scripted font might give off a fun or elaborate tone, I think that elaborate wouldn’t be appreciated by professionals if I were to hand in a report done in, say, Monotype Corsiva. I like the Bookman font because it is easy to read and more defined than other Old Style fonts.

This is the original photo that I used for my alterations. I do not own the original, so it can be found here on Flickr. I would save it as “Alice and the Flowers.”

This is the flipped image. I flipped it over the vertical axis, but it really doesn’t change all that much about the photo…it’s not very striking. I would name it “Alice Flipped.”

This is the regular cropped image. I honed in on the shrinking potion that Alice is holding because I think that it emphasizes an element of mystery and impending chaos because you never know what’s going to happen when Alice eats or drinks anything in Wonderland. I saved it as “Drink Me.”

This is the “radically cropped” photo. I flipped the photo across the horizontal axis and cropped out all of Alice’s top half to emphasize both the chaotic nature of Wonderland and to maybe tie in a quote from the movie where the Cheshire Cat stands on his head and asks Alice if she could do the same. I saved this photo as “Can You Stand on Your Head.” Also, looking at this picture after looking at the one above it is kind’ve funny.

For the brightness and contrast photo, I added both brightness and shadow to the picture. I think it really captures the essence of Wonderland in that it is a place that is at the same time bright and colorful and a little bit dark. I labeled this photo as “Darklight Wonderland.”

For the sharpness photo, I enhanced both the clarity and sharpness of the picture. That made the creases in her dress more apparent and made the whole scene look more realistic, kind of taking away from the “wonder” part of Wonderland. I labeled this photo “Real Alice.”

This is the photo that was cropped to achieve a better sense of balance. I brought in the sides and top/bottom of the picture to decrease the amount of space between Alice’s figure and the borders. I labeled this photo “Balanced Alice.”

I loved this font for the whole Wonderland theme. I used this particular caption because I think that it brings out one of the messages of the picture, which in turn highlights a theme in Wonderland with the Queen chopping off everyone’s heads. The text directly focuses the viewer’s attention on that message. I labeled this “Don’t Lose It.”

This one was just fun. I grayscaled the entire picture and then used the paintbrush tool in Picnik to color the blue potion that Alice is holding. I also added text and colored it a light blue to contrast against the dark ground and to also keep the viewer looking for the color blue in the photo. I think that by drawing the viewer’s attention to the bottle also draws the viewer’s attention to the whole “Wonderland-Impending-Chaos” theme. I titled the photo “Welcome Alice.”

As far as the MindMaps go, I think the ones that stood out the most to me were the ones that looked the simplest. Not so much in terms of content, but just the fact that they were easy to read, like Tim’s. I also liked Becca’s in terms of content because hers included media other than text. I also liked Becca’s a lot because, even though it included other media, it was very well-organized and easy to follow. I think that would make hers the one that sticks with me the most, especially when you figure in the fact that she used a lot of color with hers, which I think I’ll start doing.

I am starting to like working in a mindmap, I think. I’ve been considering what I would use it for outside of this class and then I thought about my English 600 class where we are doing graduate level Lit Theory and I figured I could use a mindmap to keep track of all the different theories and key points of each theory and see how certain theories are interconnected. I like keeping facts organized in a group and that aspect of MindMap is what I think about when I think of putting my Theory notes on a mindmap.

I learned more, I think, about Creative Commons than I did about Copyright or Fair Use in doing the readings for this week. I didn’t know what Creative Commons really was, I just thought that it was just a little box we checked in compfight.com to use free pictures. But no, it’s so much more than a little box. It did surprise me, though, to learn that anything and everything we create is copyrighted from the minute that we start working on it. I thought that the copyright laws were just for 50 years after the death of the author. It empowered me to discover what, exactly, Creative Commons is trying to do with their initiative. I like the idea of collaborating with authors and artists and trying to make great works even better. It frustrates me that people haven’t been doing this all along…it seems like it is a great idea and I mean haven’t we been taught to share with one another since we were little kids? But I guess if you factor in money and all that commercial stuff, people tend to get greedy.

With regards to my experience with this topic, I used to have a friend who used to download stuff from Limewire all of the time and he would torrent television shows frequently as well. Apparently, it seems as though the Cox company found out or realized it somehow that he was doing this and they completely cut him off from their Internet service and he had to go through another provider to use the Internet. I didn’t know that companies could do that, but it makes sense. Another friend of mine was accused of Copyright Infringement when she forgot to include a “Works Cited” page on a paper, even though she provided all of the correct in-text citations for the paper and everything. Eventually, the professor just allowed her to turn in the Works Cited page separately from the paper so that she would be able to receive a grade for the paper.

I initially changed my theme at the beginning of the course because I hated the bland white background that WordPress defaults to, but today I changed it because I felt like I needed to play with the features. I don’t remember if the default had columns, but anyway, I decided to choose a layout that had two columns, which worked out nicely with my widgets. It’s more user-friendly because of the fact that, I feel, it is more visually-pleasing to the viewer and the text is a brighter color, making it more easy to read.